Krono

by Charles L. Harness

Genres: Science Fiction; Hard Science Fiction; Space Opera

Synopsis

On an ecologically seared Earth, James Konteau is a veteran krono, a professional time traveler. His job is to ease the overpopulation crisis by establishing new colonies in Earth's prehistory, long before human beings evolved. But his job has lost all meaning, for Konteau is a lone and troubled man haunted by his own past. Now, suddenly, his future is also in turmoil: a timequake has reportedly ripped through distant eons, destroying one of Konteau's colonies. Framed for the disaster, Konteau is hunted by authorities, defying all the powers of technology and politics to escape back through the misty ages on a complex mission of death, justice, love - and incredible destiny . . .

Release date: September 24, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 216

Sample

The flight steward (young enough to be his son?) nods respectfully, hands him his ten-kilo bag, and Konteau trudges off down the landing ramp. Already the dubious gravity on Deimos, the smaller of the two Martian moons, is making him queasy. But he has been there before, and he knows he’ll get used to it. He finds a U-Drive miniskit and after a few jerks, sets off down the hollow echoing corridor to his rooms in the East Wing of the great satellite resort. He passes an old porter leaning on an auto broom and gazing with profound melancholy at the clutter and detritus spread out along the hallway: plastic plates, cups, a mask that was once gilded but is now smeared and broken, silly hats, beer cans and wine bottles, paper streamers, syntho-rice, some sort of cast-off lingerie. Konteau sympathizes with the porter but passes on. We all have our problems, he thinks, mentally addressing the old man. But look on the bright side. Because the fun-lovers ignore the waste chutes, you have a job. The trip out from Terra on the Xanadu Express was only four hours, but he is weary. He’ll clean up, take a nap, then look for some action. One week’s vacation. He’s got to make the most of it. A two-month backlog of surveys is waiting for him on his return to Terra. The Field Chief made that very clear.

He is gloomy. His heart is not really in this.

His rooms (as he anticipated) are furnished in frenzied opulence. The decor is so ridiculous it almost cheers him up. The walls are papered with synthovelvet, mercifully hidden for the most part under tapestries showing someone’s ideas of Martian landscapes. The carpets are deep red and are deeply padded. He tosses his valise onto the fur-trimmed coverlet of one of the two beds. Here and there are foldout desks, tables, and chairs of genuine plastic teak and mahogany.



An hour later he is strolling down the crowded Concourse. All the vacationers seem to have turned out to mark the death of the old Overlord, the Vyr of Vyrs. Konteau has been looking at the faces. Nobody seems to be particularly grief-stricken, but why should they be? The great religious leader was rarely seen. In fact, he probably hadn’t left his palace during the past ten years.

No, nothing sorrowful or solemn here. Quite the contrary. A raucous festive air grips the Mall. Rather like Carnival, muses Konteau, as he watches the chains of masked dancers.

He seeks the semi-safety of a doorway as a brass band in motley strides by, totally out of step, and totally off-key, banging out an ancient bawdy marching tune. A girl crowds beside Konteau to escape the troops, but a grinning youth wearing an eye mask breaks ranks long enough to spray her bare legs with very cheap, very pungent perfume. She screams happily and runs off down the Concourse ahead of the band. Konteau assumes she is hoping for a repeat.

Too violent for me, he thinks. And the noise is getting to him. Maybe he should have asked the girl to stay awhile. They could talk. But she obviously had other things on her mind. Also, he had the impression she was not entirely sane. At least not just now. And just now he could do with a spot of sanity.

Find a bar. Let’s see. Somewhere down this alley, Twin Moons. There should be some less excitable ladies sitting around, waiting for a middle-aged krono on the prowl.

An insistent voice snags at him. “Aphrodisiacs! Love potions! Potency pills from tryrannosaurus testicles! Fresh, time-traveled ground triceratops horn! Genuine dried archeopteryx gut! You sir!”

Konteau locks cold eyes (one real, one false) with the person behind the stall. (Male? Female? No way to tell for sure.) Me, impotent? He ponders the question—the implied accusation—briefly. Ask me again in the morning. No, don’t ask. His mind-set shifts. From an inner jacket pocket he pulls out his leather-cased membership card in the Gamma 300 Chess Club and flashes it for a split second before the barker’s startled eyes. “Grayjacket plain-clothes,” he says icily. “Ten thousand kroner fine, a year in Delta prison, if that stuff is controlled prehistoric material.”

The miscreant’s face contorts and is suddenly bloodless. “Oh, Kronos, sir … of course not … just ground chicken bones.…”

Konteau sighs. He improvises further. “And also there’s Section Nine-Eleven—common cheat. You think just because there’s no jail on Xanadu there’s no law here?”

“Oh, sir. Perhaps if you could come back into my … sitting room, you could explain.…” The head turns slightly, and the lacquered eyes leer at him from their corners.

Yuk! (And he still can’t make out the sex of this creature.) “Watch it, honcho,” he growls, and passes on.

A hundred meters down the Concourse he stops again. He listens to a metallic voice.

“The Overlord is dead! Long live the Overlord! But, who shall he be? Whom shall the Conclave select? Discover for yourselves the name of our next Overlord!”

The speaker is invisible. The sound is from a bank of loudspeakers. Konteau looks up at the hastily contrived holo-placards blazoning the stall-front. These are brief clips of a bare-chested man with a turban and loose red breeches holding a snake with one hand and gleaming scimitar in the other. In subsequent clips the blade flashes, the reptile is beheaded, and bloody hands rip out the long convoluted entrails.

Konteau’s mouth wrinkles in revulsion.

The grating voice continues. “I hold the Striped Bands from the College of Augurs, maintained personally by the Vyr of Delta. I have sat at the feet of the great Tages himself. I have prophesied before the noblest houses of the Four Continents, and I am known world-wide for my accuracy. I use only the freshest entrails. Next divination in ten minutes. Fee, two silver jeffersons. Group rates, see the management. Children under six, free when accompanied by an adult.”

The kron-man grimaces, then his attention is drawn to a couple talking behind him. “Biggest scam in the Mall. Snakes—like hell! He uses rabbit guts, garbage from the restaurants. Not even time-traveled.”

“The king cobra is supposed to be good for divination, but my cousin says nothing beats human entrails.”

“I’ve heard that, too. A time-traveled woman is the best of all.”

Konteau’s stomach suddenly convulses. This place, he thinks, is sick. These people are sick. Why am I here? Why did I come? For oblivion, for girls, for noise, for everything, for nothing … so I wouldn’t have to think of her. But I do think. I do remember. I can’t think of anything else. Helen … Helen … Helen.…

Hunching his head down between his shoulders, he turns away and jostles through Xanadu’s variegated guests.

A heavy but subtle perfume draws him down-corridor to the next booth. Mimosa? he wonders.

The spieler’s hypnotic chant has brought a cluster of the curious around the stall. “Ladies and gentlemen, you are privileged to observe a classic exhibition of papillon-choix, or butterfly’s choice, a form of prophecy honored since classic days. No crowding, please. Room for all. And at the ridiculously low price of one small jeff. Thank you sir, madam. Thank you, thank you.” He pulls in the coins almost faster than they touch the hard plastic tabletop.

To one side of the stone table stands a small beaker full of a clear amber liquid, apparently kept molten by an auto-heater.

Konteau frowns. It’s another Overlord divination. He has figured out the technique, but he can’t fathom the hot amber liquid. Interesting. He decides to linger and see the thing through. He listens, and the litany continues. “As we all know, there are but three benevolent, rational souls suitable as choices to be the new Overlord. First, Willem the Wistful, Vyr of Nieuw Amsterdam. Second, in distant Cathay, Li the Lowly, Vyr of Biching. And finally, in Maryland Ancienne, Paul the Pious, Vyr of Delta. As you see here, each is represented by a flower, in these three vases: Willem by his native tulip, Li by his native rose, and Paul by blossoms of his favorite mimosa.”

Konteau’s nose wrinkles. He suspects right away that the tulip and rose will turn out to be scentless. In a moment he’ll check it with Mimir, his prosthetic eye.

The barker’s beady eyes glint as they search his audience. “Wagers, anyone? Even money. Bet your guess against the butterfly?”

“Ooo, I love prophecies,” coos the dowager to Konteau’s right. “Two jeffs on Li.”

The booth-master takes the coins.

“One goldie on Willem,” says the youth in front of Konteau. There is the clank of metal.

“What kind of butterfly?” demands a third voice. “How do we know this is on the up-and-up?”

The spieler heaves a great traumatic sigh. “Sir, your question cuts me to the quick. This is the butterfly.” He holds up a tiny wire cage, not as big as his fist. “Here you will recognize a ‘red’, the smallest known of the diurnal Lepidoptera. She is indeed barely the size of the nail of my little finger. She was freshly hatched from her tiny chrysalis this very morning, and her only goal in life is to make an honest selection of the next Overlord for you, sir.”

A philomimosa, muses Konteau. The female lays her eggs exclusively on the twigs of the mimosa, and the caterpillar eats only mimosa leaves.

He senses his oculus mentally. “Mimi, prepare for an olfactory assay.” He senses, rather than hears, tiny air ducts opening in his false eye, the tiny fan drawing ambient air in and through the diminutive turbinate chamber where it is searched for specific esters and certain long-chain alcohols. He murmurs mentally, “Start with the tulip.”

Mimir’s response forms soundlessly on his cerebral cortex. “No scent. The tulip is a scentless variety.”

“The rose?”

“Also scentless.”

“But plenty from the mimosa?”

“Plenty.”

Some choice! Oh well, as the froyds say, it’s healthy to have your intelligence insulted occasionally. Keeps you humble.

A dozen more bets. “Table closed,” calls the keeper. “Here we go.” He holds up the cage with one hand, drops the clasp with the other. The tiny door drops with a barely audible squeak of it hinge, and there is a sudden flash of iridescent crimson.

Philomimosa sits on the furry mimosa sprig, wings pumping slowly, her coiled sucker searching amid the ball of pink bloomlets.

Konteau listens to collective groans of disappointment. Only two people—probably shills—had bet on Paul the Pious

The group begins to break up.

The stall-man holds up his hand. “Wait … that’s not all.” In one sweeping motion he pulls a small glass vial from beneath the table, sweeps the little butterfly into it, and holds up the container. “A simple killing jar, friends.” He grins. “She has done her work, and now she goes to her immortal reward.”

Konteau frowns. He conjectures that the inner walls of the vial must be cyanide-soaked. Stupid and cruel. Why couldn’t she have been left on the mimosa? Or at worst, just let her go? So what now?

He doesn’t like any of this, but he is fascinated, and he watches with the others. He cannot help himself. And now he breathes in sharply. He is beginning to understand.

With tweezers, the showman pulls the lifeless winged one from the capsule and plunges her into the little cup of hot amber. The wings tremble, then fold out slightly. Quickly, he pulls her out again. The liquid is apparently aerobic-catalyzed, for it hardens instantly into a small pear-shaped drop barely encompassing the sparkling red wings. Konteau notices then that the stall-man attaches the amber drop to a very elegant silver chain, with clasps. Philomimosa has become the scintillating pendant of an elegant silver necklace.

The executioner looks triumphantly about the expectant faces. They all know what is next. “Bidding,” he says, “starts at three goldies.”

“Three,” says the youth in front of Konteau. A young blond woman stands next to the bidder. Her arm is interlocked with his. Konteau thinks he recognizes the newlywed couple that sat in front of him on the ship coming out. They are still dressed in their white marriage robes, as though determined to advertise their new status in life, and he notes there’s still a sprinkling of syntho-rice in her hair. He assumes this is their honeymoon trip. Probably both have saved and scrimped for this one big splurge of a lifetime. But a goldie was probably a month’s salary for this man, and he had bid three. Where did he get that kind of money? Oh well, none of Konteau’s business.

“A priceless memento,” intones the stall-man. “When Paul is Overlord, you’ll have it to remind you that you were first to know.”

“Five,” says a girl to Konteau’s rear.

A brief silence. “Twenty-five!” declares the dowager harshly.

Even the stall-master is astonished. “Twenty-five. Thirty, anyone?” But they all know the bidding is over.

No, thinks the krono, perhaps it is not over. He has yet to place his bid. He sends a message along the nerves contacting his false eye. “Mimi, can we do it?” The dowager is shoving past him even as he is communing with certain very sophisticated microchips in his artificial eye. Yes, we can do it, barely. The problem is to encase little redwings in her time frame of five minutes ago, then warn her to get the hell out.

He listens to the clank of coins on the table. The exhibitor hands the woman the necklace. She holds it up for all to admire, and her rouged cheeks contort happily. The tiny scarlet wings sparkle like gem-flakes.

There is a sudden faint flash of light—so faint that only Konteau sees it.

The woman jerks back as the miniscule wings flutter in her face. She stares at the amber drop, uncomprehending. It no longer contains the butterfly. Her mouth drops, revealing bad teeth. Someone points—what is it? Something tiny, flying in flashes past the ceiling lights. And gone.

She turns an enraged face toward the stall-master, who looks back at her, more astonished even than she, and not really understanding anything.

A voice whispers in Konteau’s ear. “James, that was very naughty of you.” He looks down. It is Zeke Ditmars, of Corps Bio-tech. The old researcher pulls him away. “She’s going to wreck the joint. This is no place for honest men.”

Konteau agrees. “There’s a bar just around the corner.”

“The Twin Moons. By all means.”

Konteau looks back. The only faces clearly visible are those of the newlywed couple. Their eyes search him like laser beams, then suddenly turn away. He notes spectral light flashes at the man’s sleeves. Diamond cufflinks? Interesting. He thinks of a pair he used to have. Now long gone, but no regrets.

Behind them the screeches, general demolition, and howling laughter gradually fade. Konteau is feeling better and better. Day one is getting off to a fair start.



Ten minutes later he is following with vague disinterest the fluid movements of the dancers over the grav-table in the Twin Moons. Their graceful airborne arcs and loops synchronize perfectly with the pre-programmed on-off gravity circuits under the table. Colored lights flick over their enameled bodies. And over all, like an eternal sky or sea, the soft subdued songs drift in from hidden speakers. The voices are winding up Ratell’s Roundelay.

Oh, sing with me the song of Time,

    Tiempo, Temps, Zeit.

Got no reason, got no rhyme,

    Vremya, Tempus, Tijd.

Oh, nine equations that they wrote us,

Delivered by Ratell and Kronos.…

Oh, sing with me the song of Time,

    Tiempo, Temps, Zeit.

There’s barely a pause, and now they are off into some sugary sentimental ballad. “Though you flee beyond the Moon someday I’ll find you now, now, now, let it be now.…”

Konteau watches the dancers and finds himself wondering about the programmer. “Some very fancy footwork there,” he mused.

“Eh? Oh, the programming? Quite right, James. Glad you asked. All spare-time work, done by a very talented amateur.”

Konteau frowned faintly. He couldn’t recall asking anything. “Really?” he said politely.

“You want to meet her?”

“Her?” He blinks. Is there actually a woman of intellect and poetic accomplishment out here?

“You got a hearing problem? Her. A girl. A woman. Isn’t that why you’re here? lb meet some interesting women?”

Konteau shrugs.

Ditmars’s mouth wrinkles into a parched grin. “You wait here, I’ll put in a call for her.”

“She’s here on holiday?”

“No. Actually she’s working. You wait. Give me a few minutes.”

The old man disappears.

Konteau doesn’t mind the wait. Here the noise is soft, muted. He likes the sheltering anonymity of strange tongues, secret syllables blending into dull invariant white sound, such as one might hear from an ancient seashell held to the ear.

Like snowflakes the soft numbing lyrics continue to float down. “I roam the stars … looking for her … where is my love tonight.…” Dull, pleasant noise, thinks Konteau. Neither good nor bad. Just nothing. Pointless even to think about it.

Helen, where are you tonight? When you left you took nothing—except my brain (both hemispheres), heart, lungs, guts, muscles, bones. For days I walked around as a hollowed-out corpse.

He looks up. The old scientist is back with a woman in tow. After the brief introduction (“Demmie, this is James Konteau.”) she sits at the bar, next to him.

During the opening small talk he studies her covertly. There is something at once nondescript yet impressive about this woman. Age? Young enough to be his daughter. Under thirty, certainly. Her clothes have a severe tailored look, as though she is traveling incognito and they are part of her disguise. As long as she is still, and silent, and looking away, the camouflage works fairly well. She blends in, unnoticed, with the ladies of the night, the johns, the furniture, the glassware on and behind the bar. But when she swivels on that stool, in that fluid, graceful motion, and looks at him with those cool brown eyes (questing, yet authoritative), she loses all claim to anonymity. By the Four Horsemen, woman (he thinks, squinting and blinking, and embarrassed by her fine figure), you don’t belong on a bar st. . .